A merchant operating a brick and mortar store can service customers using a point of sale (POS) system. The POS system can include a physical electronic cash register or dedicated POS hardware. When customers want to purchase items for sale from the store, the merchant uses the POS system to record and complete the transaction. The POS system can also manage inventory for the store, e.g., track quantities of items for sale.
In a conventional point-of-sale electronic credit card transaction, the transaction is authorized and captured over a network connection. In the authorization stage, a physical credit card with a magnetic stripe is swiped through a merchant's magnetic card reader, e.g., as part of a point-of-sale device. A payment request is sent electronically from the magnetic card reader to a credit card processor. The credit card processor routes the payment request to a card network, e.g., Visa or Mastercard, which in turn routes the payment request to the card issuer, e.g., a bank. Assuming the card issuer approves the transaction, the approval is then routed back to the merchant. In the capture stage, the approved transaction is again routed from the merchant to the credit card processor, card network and card issuer, and the payment request can include the cardholder's signature (if appropriate). The capture stage can trigger the financial transaction between the card issuer and the merchant, and optionally creates a receipt. There can also be other entities, e.g., the card acquirer, in the route of the transaction. Debit card transactions have a different routing, but also require swiping of the card.
Occasionally, the merchant chooses to operate an online ecommerce store in addition to the brick and mortar store. The merchant can create a commerce web site and manually enter inventory data from the brick and mortar store. The merchant can program the web site to process online payment transactions.